Alan Stewart’s UK and Ireland family history news

Ancestry updates UK and Ireland obituaries

Ancestry.co.uk has recently updated its collection of United Kingdom and Ireland obituaries.

Ancestry’s UK and Ireland obituaries collection is being built “using an automated finding and extraction system to gather data from thousands of newspaper sites”. Apparently, “most of the records have not been reviewed by humans before appearing in the Obituary Collection”, and doesn’t it show. Ancestry’s censuses and birth, marriage and death indexes have good search facilities, but I’m afraid that can’t be said of the Obituary Collection.

The obituaries come from many local and a few national newspapers, and generally span the years from 2003 or 2004 to date, although only a few issues of the newspapers seem to have been covered. You can search or browse the obituaries from specific newspapers, of which 117 are English, 11 Scottish,and supposedly four Irish (although one seems to be Canadian). There are no Welsh, Isle of Man or Channel Islands newspapers at all.

This is not one of Ancestry’s better collections, but you never know, you may find something of interest there.